Peggy Brookins, NBCT

Peggy Brookins, NBCT, is President and CEO of National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. Prior to this role, she was the National Board's Executive Vice President and also served on the Board of Directors. In July 2014, President Barack Obama named Brookins as a member of the President’s Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for African Americans. In 1994, she co-founded the Engineering and Manufacturing Institute of Technology at Forest High School in Ocala, Florida, where she served as director and as a mathematics instructor until her arrival at National Board. Brookins achieved her certification in Adult and Young Adolescent Mathematics in 2003 and renewed in 2013. She has been inducted into the University of Florida Hall of Fame and is a Florida Education Association “Everyday Hero,” and received the association's Excellence in Teaching Award. In 2013, Brookins was named an Aspen Ideas Festival Scholar. Follow her on twitter @Pbrookins44.

I have the good fortune of leading one of the country’s outstanding education organizations. The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards does many things – we define the standards of accomplished teaching; we run an assessment certifying that teachers teach to those standards; and we advocate for policy that integrates National Board Certification and capitalizes on the expertise of NBCTs. With all the work we do in our National Board offices, I get the most pleasure out of my work when I’m with classroom teachers and their students, seeing our impact firsthand. It’s you, the teachers who have earned and…

What did I want to be when I grew up? When I was little, my answer was a dentist or an astronaut. But, I was a child of the 1960s, a turbulent time to be a young African American girl in the south. There were neighborhoods I couldn’t live in and places I couldn’t eat. Like many who may be reading this piece, I lived the moments that were described in history books – and my chosen professions were long shots. How did I become a teacher? I was one of those kids who asked LOTS of questions. In 8th…

This week 3,384 National Board Certified Teachers learned that they renewed their certification. I want to offer my congratulations to those educators for their notable achievement. They teach to high standards, they are committed to continually improving their teaching practice and, perhaps above all, they are committed to students and their learning. This is the time of year that I think about my renewal, why I did it and how I think it made a difference to me and to the students I taught. When I began my NBCT renewal process, I expected to revisit the standards and reengage with…

For some of us, this is the most wonderful time of the year. The time leading up to the annual Teaching & Learning conference is exciting and exhausting – a time full of possibilities. I come to the office and colleagues are buzzing. Will major figure X be coming? What about policy leader Y? Will we meet the deadline for that or this deliverable? The work is exhilarating because we know that thousands of people in the field will convene in Washington with one focus – stepping back for a couple days to improve their practice. The hard-working planning team…